The Sun’s Financial Diary

On top of the 9% gain in March, our net worth grew strongly in April, due to the robust rebound in the stock market, even though we took out cash last month to pay taxes. Without house and vehicle related items, our net worth at the end of April showed a gain of $58,504.90 to [...]

It seems we had a pretty good month in March. For the first time this year, our net worth actually went up by a rather significant amount with the help from the big rally in the stock market. Excluding house and cars, we had a total of $486,449.83 on March 31, an increase of $40,196.76, [...]

I was very surprised when I finished calculating our net worth at the end of February. With major stock indices losing more than 10% for the month, our net worth, with everything considered, only saw a moderate loss of $5,955.99 (1.32%) over a month ago to a total of $446,280.10 on February 28th.

Details of each [...]

After the 5.31% rebound in the last month of 2008, our net worth took a hit again in January, thanks to the 8.57% plunge (the S&P 500) of the stock market. On January 31, 2009, our net worth totaled at $452,236.08 without items related to house and cars. That’s $20,524.23 (4.34%) less than a month [...]

Another month, another loss.
We ended the month of November with our paper fortune taking yet another hit, though the scale of the loss is much smaller than the one we had in October. For the month, our net worth declined $17,011.73 (3.65%) to a total of $448,925.10, the third straight monthly decline.

Here’s a quick look [...]

Because of the vacation in September and October, I haven’t posted an update of our net worth for two months. I ran a quick check before I left for vacation in September and the numbers were not looking good, but still acceptable. However, after I left the country at the end of September, things on [...]

Our net worth actually rose a little bit last month!
What I remembered of the stock market in August was that it was as volatile as it has been lately: up 100 points one day, down 200 points the next. So it’s hard to tell how the stocks and mutual funds we invest in did for [...]

Stock markets haven’t been friendly to us for more than a year now. And as stocks declined, so did our net worth.
July could have been a pretty good month if the Dow hadn’t suffered the 200-point lose in the last trading day of the month. But it did happen and, as a result, we finished [...]

U. S. stock market fell hard in June 2008, so did our paper wealth (because most of our assets are stocks with only value on paper). When the Dow closed the month at two-year low, there isn’t really anything good to expect and that’s exactly what happened to our net worth.
After two consecutive monthly gains [...]

It’s that time of the month again to see how we did in May.
After seeing a robust 9.25% growth in April, our net worth changed modestly last month, gaining 2.11%. That’s the second consecutive monthly increase. As of May 31, our net worth is at $605,520.98, up $12,489.11 from April, thanks to another month of [...]